President Barack Obama announced Thursday that the US will end trade privileges with Bangladesh over concerns for safety and working conditions in factories.

The US will suspend Bangladesh from the Generalized System of Preferences (GSP), which will increase tariffs on certain goods. The move, in response to recent garment factory disasters, will not directly affect the garment industry because they were not eligible for duty cuts under GSP.

Next week in San Diego, I’ll be on a “late breaking” news panel at the Association for Asian Studies’ annual conference. I’ve started to think about how to explain the many ways that connectivity — social media, VOIP, chat clients — have really colored how I think about news and story telling about the region. From telling stories using curation to the essential reading of bloggers on Global Voices, international news has been drawn in a lot closer to audiences in the United States. Journalists can no longer write or produce news with the expectation that the subjects of stories will not be able to see or comment on how they’ve been portrayed. Local feedback is instantaneous. But what does this mean for politics across Asia? How do things change when people in Asia can directly communicate with people anywhere else in the world, and vice versa?

If Chinese Characters is about telling the stories of everyday life in China, China Stories is explicitly a way to think about how we tell and hear those stories. Historian Jeffrey Wasserstrom and I teamed up again to curate and edit this e-book volume of reviews and analyses for the Los Angeles Review of Books. The cover art is by Chinese artist and activist Ai Weiwei, who figures in the collection alongside some others who have shaped how we see China and how people in China see themselves.

When the Indian pharmaceutical company Cipla announced last month that it would cut the cost of three drugs used to treat cancers – one used for lung cancer and two for breast cancer – people around the world responded. Some of the most lengthy conversations took place on the news commenting site Reddit, including a thread 420 comments long in response to a news report in The Economic Times (India).

Sri Lanka has captured attention recently for a deteriorating situation around human rights. International Crisis Group researcher Alan Keenan explains why the Human Rights Council review is so important, and why the world should care.

Today is publication day for Chinese Characters! The first shipments via Amazon have reached readers and the book is now easily available to anyone.

We’ve got a lot going on, including East (New York City) and West (Los Angeles) Coast book launches and talks and seminars in China, Boston, Philadelphia and around Southern California. Please do RSVP to our hosts if you are interested in attending any of the events near you!

How are ordinary Chinese dealing with the dramatic changes in their country? That’s what the new book Chinese Characters: Profiles of Fast-Changing Lives in a Fast-Changing Land unveils. Tune into Eye on China as Natalie Tso talks with the book’s co-editor Angilee Shah.

I’m working with the Association for Asian Studies, the Journal of Asian Studies and Jeffrey Wasserstrom on a new news proposal. We’re one of 51 finalists of some 1,000 entries to the Knight News Challenge and will find out in a few weeks if they will help fund the project. In the meantime, we’re looking for more ideas to make this project work and make it sustainable.

In part 2 of this interview, Rob Schmitz talks more about factory workers in China, the vast system of netting installed at factory dormitories to cut back on worker suicides, the problems with and opportunities for doing responsible journalism in China, and his book recommendations.